No one wants to see the poor students (or their parents) gouged for rents however rents tend to follow the law of supply and demand. When rents get too high, landlords will find themselves with vacant rentals.

On the other hand, some sort of code enforcement vis a vis property condition should be strictly enforced including grass cutting by the tenants and general yard cleanup after nights of debauchery.

In the current housing environment (although it is seeing a slight upswing), renting is a reasonable alternative to foreclosure and short sales. Both will cause the property to deteriorate faster than rentals. Making rentals a viable alternative via reasonable rents makes all the sense in the world.

Interesting that Andrea Hawvermale, vice-president of the Prince George's Property Owners' Association, lives in Sandy Spring. So while she and her group try to dictate to College Park residents, she and her husband are comfortably ensconced on 20 acres in Montgomery County on a quiet, dead-end street. Probably no loud college group-homes near them!

The city's sales pitch on rent stabilization and its actions do not mesh. If there was such a concern about the students getting gouged, then the rent control would apply to all rental properties, including the big apartment complexes. It is interesting to note that the rent stabilization came about around the same time there was a push to build student highrises. Was it really a lure to get investors to build the highrises knowing that the competition of smaller rental properties would not compete and even diminish, driving the student to the bigger complexes?

As for controlling the problem rental, the city has plenty of mechanisms in place for that, namely the numerous codes and their enforcement officers (noise, trash, grass height, etc.)

While some landlords live outside College Park, many like myself do live in College Park. Furthermore, my rental house has never had a code violation in 6 years. Rather than punishing all students and landlords, the city should use the tools already in their toolbox to crack down on problem houses. Very few students can afford multiple noise violation fines in one semester.
As far as making housing affordable, according to the Sage report, the goal of rent stabilization is to ELIMINATE affordable housing! It goes like this: the high-rises cost too much, so students choose to live in more affordable rental homes, so rent stabilization needs to be extended in order to shut down the rental homes so that students a compelled to live in the high-rises. So rent stabilization EXPLICITLY (according to the Sage report which is the basis for extending rent stabilization) aims to remove rental houses as an option because students are choosing them and not the high-rises for affordability reasons. Students rack up enough debt these days, let's not disenfranchise them by forcing them to pay higher rents in order to balance a corporate budget sheet.